Going North Part 2

I held the hood of my rain jacket out over my face, shielding my eyes from the hard rain. I couldn’t see the far shore. My biggest fear was rocks. If we hit a rock which damaged the motor or the boat, or worse yet threw one or both of us into the water, we’d be in real trouble. I looked at my old partner. He’d managed to get the hood up on his rain jacket. He had his life jacket on upside down. He was depending on me to keep him safe. I was still lost. Sometimes we have little to go on but hope and faith.

Time distorts when we’re in trouble. I don’t know how long we travelled north in that little boat, searching for the shoreline. It seemed like an hour, but it was probably no more than twenty minutes. The wind blew hard, and the rain continued to pelt us. Gusts of wind blew rain and lake water onto us. We hunkered down.

Finally the shore appeared. We’d gone straight North by the compass. Trees and a rock line loomed before us, but no camp. I pulled the boat within twenty feet of shore and stopped. My boat partner and I hadn’t talked in some time.

“We’re still lost!” he yelled.

“No we’re not, we’re on the North shore of Roderick Lake. Which way do you think camp is? Right or Left? East or West?”

He looked carefully both ways. “I don’t know!”

“I think West. I’m going to turn right.”

“That’s what I was going to say,” he yelled.

“OK. If we don’t find camp we’ll come back. But we’re staying on this shore!”

I turned the boat. Because the wind was at our shoulder the boat handled differently, wallowing some. Slowing down didn’t help.

“Hold on! “I yelled. My partner looked back at me and nodded. His face looked grim.

We came to a spit of land going south from shore. I turned into the wind and the bow of the boat began to bounce. Cutting the waves with the V of the little boat was better. I sped up. At the end of the land was an island. A narrow channel separated it from land. Those channels were often shallow, and I feared the rocks.

“I’m going around this island, then we’ll turn back North!”

As we neared the end of the island my partner grew animated.

“Look!” He was pointing ahead of us.

Sticking up from a line of rocks was a thin steel rod, rebar. Wired on top of it was a green plastic jug. It was meant to warn boaters of underwater rocks.

“We’re close!” he said. We’d both seen that jug before. Giving the jug ample berth I turned back North. He pointed again, and turned with a big grin. Amid the white caps we saw two white buoys, markers for the float planes.

“Look on shore for the cabin!” I yelled.

Rain still hampered our vision. But I thought I saw something out of the ordinary, something too smooth, too even. It was the hulls of unused fishing boats stacked on the shore by our camp.

“There it is!”

“Where?”

“Off to the right!”

“I don’t see it!”

“It’s there.”

We were in open water. I twisted the motor handle open full and made a line straight for the hulls. As we got closer we saw the roof of the cabin. Then smoke coming from the chimney. Relief washed over me. I pictured our friends sitting around the kitchen table, warmed by the stove, not far away. We were having steaks that night. I’d seen them in the fridge. We would dock the boat, leave the gear, get into the cabin, and be in for the night. Safe. Dry clothes, hot meal, warm bed.

As we neared the dock our trip leader was standing on the dock. The rain was letting up. He held up his arms and smiled.

“We were worried about you!”

“No more worried than us!” my partner said.

Our leader grabbed the rope on the bow and pulled us up the inclined dock, our boat filling the last empty slot. First he helped my partner step out of the boat and onto the dock. Then he came to where I was sitting at the rear of the boat.

“How was it out there?” he asked.

“It was a son of a bitch.”

“We were giving you twenty more minutes and if you weren’t back we were coming out looking for you.”

“Did you see that storm coming?” I asked.

“Yeah, we were in open water and saw the storm across the lake. We got in before the rain started.”

“I didn’t see it at all. It was my fault.”

“I thought maybe you’d gone to shore to wait it out.”

“No. I felt like I had to get him back.”

“Well, I’m glad you did.”

I started dinner with a couple of fingers of Bushmill’s Irish whiskey. I was still a little jumpy after coming off the lake. My partner in the adventure sat next to me with a tumbler of vodka. Our friends were sympathetic. Well, sympathetic to a point. Several of them remarked that while they were worried, of course they were worried, they realized if we didn’t happen to make it back there would be two more sirloins for them. They wanted details of our time in the storm. I ate while my partner talked. Steak and hash browns never tasted so good.

“Well, it’s raining like hell, we don’t know where we are, and Dave pulls out this candy ass little compass and tells me we’re going clear across the lake. So I have little choice but to go with him. I thought we were going to be blown right into the lake a couple of times, and I don’t swim very well. But by God we got here, all because I saw that green jug.“

He held his glass up, I raised mine, and we clicked them together.

“You were a good captain,” he said.

“You were a great first mate.” We drank. I believe we had a few more after that as well. Before I turned in that night I had a cigar.

This trip has a twenty year plus history. Our leader and at least one other of the eight have been on every one. Another of the crew was on the original trip, missed a few, and is back. It was my first time. They know what they’re doing; what it costs down to the penny, equipment needed, groceries required, how it works crossing the border. I felt I was in good hands. The leader filleted all the fish, made the major decisions, handled the money, told us when to start releasing fish, and generally kept everything running smoothly and on schedule. He did it very well and very quietly.

Why do guys go on these trips? I can’t speak for them. I went for the beauty, and to recapture something I found up there years before. I wasn’t sure I would ever make it back. I hadn’t fished in fifteen years. When I was young, still acting director of YSB and working way too hard, I went with a bunch of guys to the Canadian border on a similar trip. Rustic cabin, little motorboats, cases of beer. I slept in the back of a van the whole way up, twelve hours plus. The fellas thought there was something wrong with me, roused me in Northern Minnesota at a donut shop and told me to go to the bathroom. A few days into the trip, after I was rested, I woke to the beauty of the sky and the lakes around me. It cleared my head. I got married soon after that, and started my family.

Years later I took my son to the boundary waters three summers in a row, beginning when he was in 7th grade. I wanted him to find what I had found years before. We cooked freeze dried food and fish, humped our canoe and gear over portages, set up camp, hiked, fished, and lazed around. When it rained we stayed in the tent and read short stories to each other. We had fun. It was a special time for me, and for him I think.

Why do guys go on these trips? They go to experience the fresh air and sunshine of all day on the lake and remember the feel of a fish on the line. To walk through the woods on a path you’ve never travelled. To carve a week out of your life that is simple. To tell old jokes to people that haven’t heard them, enjoy old friendships, and make new ones. One thing for sure, they don’t go for the big pots in the poker games.

When I woke in the middle of the night I would sometimes walk out on the dock and look at the sky. There is no light pollution in the wilderness of Northern Ontario. You forget how beautiful the night sky can be. We saw a hint of Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, dancing on the night horizon, shimmery and white, like sheer curtains. Early one morning I went outside and saw the sky over the lake lit by the sun rising behind the cabin.

Later that morning four of us travelled to a corner of the lake, into the river that feeds Lake Roderick, got out of our boats and pulled them by ropes from shore through a narrow rock gorge with rapids to navigate once again on a wider section of the river, finally tying them up at the head of a portage trail. We gathered our fishing gear, extra boat gas, and a lunch we had packed to follow a narrow rocky portage trail up and over the hill that separates Roderick from a smaller lake simply named Walleye. There we found two old boats with 8 HP motors tied to a small dock and gas cans under a crude wooden box near them. As we fished and explored Walleye Lake I felt doubly removed, absolutely cut off, floating quietly in the Canadian wilderness under a bright sun. Walleye Lake is aptly named by the way. We filleted them in the boat, on an oar, to avoid the weight of so many whole fish on the trip back.

That night I saw the moon rising over the lake that was lit red by the sun that morning.

Later in the week we made another portage on the south end of the lake, this time bypassing a loud cascade of water in the stream that is the outlet for Roderick. This was an easier walk. We saw signs of moose on the trail. It was good to get off the lake and walk deep into the woods. It’s quiet and beautiful in there as well.

These guys have moved their trip around, from one Canadian outfitter to another, flying in from various departure points, fishing on lots of different lakes. Apparently, a number of other groups have gone to Roderick Lake, stayed in that particular cabin over and over, year after year. Each visit they leave home made plaques on the walls, some nicely done with wood burners, which list their names, note the year, and comment on their stay. One group noted that in July of 1997 “All We Caught Was a Buzz.”

On the back of one nicely done peeled log, hung carefully from a support beam over the kitchen table on brass eyelets in 2012, The Snore Crew shared this thought

“Trips like these remind men they can be boys forever.”

They might be on to something there.